Why they became member of the O.T.O. 30 too many similarities with the Catholic church

From: XXX
Date: March 1997
To: koenig @ cyberlink.ch
Dear Peter,
And in reference to your inquiry about my own experiences with the OTO,
I'm afraid they are fairly limited. I lived on the West Coast for
several years. I have always been interested in magick, mostly on a
personal, individual level. I do not consider myself a "joiner,"
although I have been initiated into several magickal orders merely to
establish a link through which to procure literature and information.
The first of these (when I was about 18 years old) was the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn, headed by a woman named Laura Jennings. They
were mostly a study group that had received considerable tutelage from
Regardie, and they did some fairly traditional G.D. rituals and
initiations. The most rewarding aspect of my involvement with that
group was that it brought me in contact with several fascinating people
such as the writer Robert Anton Wilson, who was living with Ms.
Jennings at the time. Thus I was able to hang out with him fairly often
outside the Golden Dawn activities, having dinner and talking, and from
him I learned more about the humor and constructive trickery of
magickal perspective than from the formal teachings of any order, per
se. I was also able to participate in several "magickal" reality games
organized by Wilson, in which Erisian/Discordian plots were dramatized
in a freestyle, role-playing capacity. Great fun!
But I digress... The next order I came in contact with was — you
guessed it — the Caliphate OTO in Los Angeles, in which Jim Eshelman
was the predominant figure at the time. That was just before Grady
died, so I arrived on that scene just in time to meet ol' Hymenaeus
Alpha (during a visit to Berkely) and to experience all the furor and
hubbub surrounding the OTO after McMurtry's "Great Feast." I did not,
however, take initiations after 0* and 1*, because I really don't
ascribe to the Cult of Crowleanity — and although I do not think that
the OTO is exactly that, many of the younger, more zealous members do a
pretty fair job of making it seem so most of the time. I did have the
opportunity to meet several of the people (very briefly) mentioned in
your writing, including Breeze, Secklar, Heidrick, etc. Following that,
I went through a period of disillusion with magickal orders altogether
and limited my association with the Caliphate OTO to the occasional
Gnostic Mass from then on. This was mainly due to my frustration and
disgust with political infighting and the neurotic "personalities" that
attend any organized group of human beings, but especially, it seems,
when the main focus is metaphysical.
Somewhere in there I also joined the New Thelemic Order of the Golden
Dawn, a Thelemic group started by ex-OTO member and Regardie student
David Cherubim (David Wall). They were nice, easy-going people but I
didn't stay involved with them for very long. I have since heard that
Cherubim claims to have received some Book of the Law-type transmission
from a praeterhuman intelligence (like Aiwaz, perhaps?) which purports
to charter an even newer Aeon than the Aeon of Horus! Imagine that...
My main interest thereafter has been Chaos Magick, primarily because of
its pragmatic, freestyle approach and its inherent incompliance with
hierarchy. I became an early member of the first U.S. temple of the
Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) when I met Peter Carroll during one of
his visits to California, and he initiated me into the first two
degrees of that order (even though degrees in the IOT mean relatively
little and no one pays any attention to them whatsoever). The Pact, as
it is called, was the closest thing I could find to what I was looking
for in a magickal order, and I enjoyed working with them for several
years. In my opinion, they attract the liveliest variety of magicians
in recent years, along with groups like T.O.P.Y. and a few other very
individual, shamanic-style groups. But as with most group efforts, I
eventually grew bored of working with "personalities" (the Pact grew
considerably, and soon involved several zealous, fanatical members who
rubbed me the wrong way in their tendencies to play the "my wand's
bigger than your wand" game, a syndrome peculiar to left-hand path
magicians, I believe).
Now I live in N*** and still practice magick in my own private,
iconoclastic way. It seems to be my true "Will" to get what I can from
groups and then move on. My chief complaint with groups like the OTO is
that it takes too fucking long to get any useful information out of
them, and that they're run by unnecessarily secretive, egotistical
leaders who like to classify information (that most perceptive people
find out on their own anyway) so that they (the leaders) are sure to
remain in charge, holding the keys, pulling the strings, etc. There are
too many similarities with the Catholic church, and I think that sort
of structure is manipulative, exhausted and obsolete. Even so, all the
crazy dramas that have come out of the Golden Dawn, the FS, the OTO,
etc., do make for a good, juicy and entertaining read. It'll all paint
history a bit more colorfully, I'm sure.
And that's about it. Wish I could be more help in your studies, but I'm
afraid I really don't possess any arcane information you don't already
have. Nevertheless, it's good talking to you and thanks again for the
info. All "orders" subject to the murky nature of metaphysics meted out
by ordinary humans can stand to benefit (whether they like it or not)
from an objective eye. Good luck in the future. E-mail me with anything
you think I might enjoy, if you have the time.